Briefest Lives: Jared “Desmond” White

In the summer of 2012, I watched him enter the cabin, navigating the small, intimate space ungracefully like a bull in a china shop, carrying haphazardly a six pack of beer and some bratwursts from the local supermarket in town. Desmond resembled a bear, covered in thick body hair, earning the moniker, “Jear-Bear” or “Bear-Bear.” Though, truthfully he was not much like a bear at all. Bears to me are loaners, right-wing nut jobs, living in seclusion to cultivate a safe interior world within the greater, unstable one that advanced without paying heed to their objections and idiosyncrasies. Jared—that is, Desmond’s given name—allayed any suspicion of malevolence with his wild, joyful presence, warm and inviting like a cozy fireplace on a cold winter night. His frame was massive, though not barrel chested, not quite obese, but robust and full figured, towering over most of his contemporaries, a bespectacled giant. Calm hands unpacked the food, steady and methodical. Inside the fridge, an array of scattered, half eaten food lie fallow and disorganized, though a particular order governed the contents, assuming categories associated by meal and time of day. One bed in the cabin, dressed with one ratty comforter and scattered clothing suggested there had been no one else living there prior to my arrival, save him and the occasional weekend guest. Below us, accessible by a roughhewn step ladder through a trapdoor a hobby room contained a small desk, a pool table, and a reasonable bookshelf. Well-worn spines, outward facing, arranged in order topically, then alphabetically spanned the shelves, some paying respects to classical poets and others to modern film writing. Yellowed pages stained with water spilled over the boundaries of the desk, filled with scant etchings of plots and characters from his myriad projects in process. A beaten, ragged chair, assaulted by hours of supporting Desmond’s genius was neatly pushed into the desk’s interior, an ingrained habit instilled from oversea boarding schools across the South Pacific. A daily itinerary, taped to the wall with blue painters tape, was filled out with a disciplined schedule. Letters from home, opened at the top, earmarked for future perusal were stuffed under the papers, should the time allow for such things. A second bathroom, covertly added on by his father, adjacent to the hobby room was full of board games of varying degrees of complexity, designed by complacent grunge era computer scientists to be played when the weather prohibited venturing out into the world. Hand painted miniatures shared the space, like sentries guarding a vault of precious belongings. In previous months I had added to the collection of warriors, goblins, spacefaring marines and makeshift terrain, contrasted from reclaimed refuse and dollhouses. My gaze was fixed to a single ogre, a green faced abomination burdened with appropriated bits of plastic representations of military equipment fastened to its body with hobby glue, unlike the others, lean and bent over with scatterings of acrylic blood on their dry brushed lips. Upstairs Desmond called me with his lumbering steps, and my focus was unmoored. As tradition dictated, we both were due for a hike to Strawberry Peak, and the sun was soon to set.